Course starts with virtual world field trips to educational sims in Second Life. Week 2 introduces Machinima and its educational uses. Week 3 is an adventure in the MMORPG World of Warcraft with an educators' guild. Week 4 wraps up the tours on the Bleeding Edge with emerging tech and education that includes virtual, blended and augmented realities.

Week 4: Bleeding Edge Wednesday

Wow!!! Awesome talk by Lyr Lobo. So many great ideas and projects that she is working on. My brain is teaming with possiblities. :D So first some links from the chat for those that were not able to make it tonight.

Task Discussion

I think its always a great idea for everyone to know what's out there and what's coming. Being prepared will help you get ahead of the pack. Developing my Course Design I have been taught to keep the course as fun and innovative as possible with what is at your disposal. 9 times out of 10 (assuming higher education) the students will have access to the Internet; most campuses have free Wi-Fi anyways so utilize the Internet as a means of teaching. Goodness knows your students spend more time on their computer/laptop working on assignments and social media sites, why force them to do a chapter guide with their course book? Heaven knows they are just going to sell it back whether to the campus bookstore or online (i.e. amazon, ebay or other). So I have been told that yes, forcing students to make blogs/twitter accounts on their experiences and their reflections may be time consuming for a teacher/instructor/professor of 30+ students, but in all honesty let's think about the Positive. Most of your class will probably do more of the assignments if they have free-reign on a blog of their own (teaching them skills they will need in the twenty-first century), your class will do better on quizzes/tests/exams after having followed a syllabus you made (you have to make one for everything else anyways, so its not that big a deal, once you make one you can copy and paste the majority of it to all the other blog-related assignments) and the their reflection portion helps ingrain the material better and it can be their own end-of-the-year study guide (the blog keeps a record you know, while they can also send it to their parents saying, "Look what I did in class. This teacher is so hip and cool. I can do my homework while I'm on the bus"). Yes, it’s a little far-fetched here and there, but you get the gist of it, yes?

As far as bleeding edge goes, Lyr Lobo brought to light the ability of touch screens and thought-movement activated mouses that you wear on your head. I'm telling you, virtual reality is only a few years away; but the knowledge of knowing these things, will help me plan ahead. Being a Graphic Designer, we are called upon to do many things, one of them being a User Interface Designer and this entails being able to predict and provide pre-exposure to systems they are sure to see, if not already doing so. Tablets and touch-screened smart phones involve a more interactive and well established design aesthetic different from the usual HTML5 websites and flashy media you see on television. Soon people will be able to watch TV in their kitchen and be able to flip through what they want to see. Your boring old news, won't be just what they have lined up, you can choose the news to local, national, weather, sports or anything else just be touching the screen or flicking with your hands; its just that easy. When I think, I think big and we are not too far off from the bleeding edge technology you see. What this translates to Course Designers and User Interface Designers is that the more interactive you make your lessons and assignments, the more involved your students will become. I mostly work with higher education because there are more options available for me to work with, K-12 has a harder limit, but interactivity can be found here as well.

Newspaper and magazines are, sorry to say, slowly fading from the modern age; and let's face it its more economic-wise to do everything online, so instead of doing a school wide magazine/newspaper (not to say that’s wrong but more Student/User-generated) then a class blog or twitter. Have them write articles for it talking about what they learned; it reinforces the reflection principle that is easily lost in our fast as lightning culture. Short-term memory is grand and all, but to build up the long term memory review and reflection is the way to go. Make it a class project, get everyone involved; have people write articles, draw pictures, take photographs, make music and record podcasts. Full class participation is a must because everyone can do something and what is more empowering for self-esteem than making something and seeing it online; soon friends, family and anyone in the school can see what you've done and show that you are learning. I always get so excited when I talk about these things. Its best to start these sorts of class projects at the beginning of the year and begin to develop it like a chore, give them the last twenty to thirty minutes to plan and create every other class period. They'll be asking you to stay afterschool, skip their lunch/study block and work on more projects giving them more chances to learn outside of the curriculum.